


Exploratory Vessel Bathrooms Suck

by orphan_account



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Based on a Tumblr Post, Canon Universe, F/M, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-29
Updated: 2017-04-29
Packaged: 2018-10-25 09:33:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10761507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Magnus gets stuck in the shower. Lup and Barry get called out. Exploratory vessel bathrooms really, really suck.Based on a Tumblr post (link in notes)(Barry/Lup isn't front and center for the whole fic, but it's definitely not just background)





	Exploratory Vessel Bathrooms Suck

**Author's Note:**

> I saw this post (http://theoppositeofprofound.tumblr.com/post/160038926054/another-thought-about-the-starblaster-as-a-tiny) and had to write this. Also, this is my first non-Homestuck non-smut fic so that's a milestone.
> 
> Rating is pretty much just for language.

Okay, so hell is definitely real. Magnus is one hundred percent sure of that. There’s no way that he’s not in hell right now, paying for some sin he’s pretty sure didn’t warrant this level of punishment. There’s no other explanation for why he’d be stuck in the shower of the Starblaster. It’s gotta be that he’s died again and gone straight to hell this time. 

It’s actually his first time showering in the Starblaster- up to this point, he’d been able to bathe on-planet, either in waterfalls or rivers or lakes or whatever the current planet’s residents used to get clean. Not this time. This time they’d landed on a mud planet. And that was really all it was- just hundreds of thousands of miles of mud in every direction. There were plants, too, stalks that were about waist-high, grew in clusters, and looked pretty much like giant grass blades. Some of them were sharp, too, like needles. Magnus found that out the hard way when he rushed into a clump of the sharp plants- needlerush, Lucretia had named them later- and ended up a human pincushion. For plants, they sure did fucking hurt. 

To add insult to injury, when he tried to make his way back to the Starblaster, he stepped in just the wrong place and started sinking. Mud was up to his right knee, and when he tried to push himself out with his left leg, that leg started sinking too. There was mud in his boots, and every time he moved he sank deeper. 

_Surface area,_ he remembered, and as the mud reached just above his knees, he sat down as best he could. By the grace of some god, his ass didn’t start sinking, and he carefully, slowly pulled his legs out of the mud one at a time. He lost his right boot to the marsh, and when he got back to the ship, he was muddy from the waist down and bleeding from the needlerush stab wounds and ready to just take a shower and maybe lie down for the next year. Cap’nport wouldn’t let him on the ship, though, not as covered in mud as he was. Lup came out onto the deck just to laugh at him, and actually called Taako and Barry out to join her. 

Taako and Lup were in tears, and even Barry- fucking _Barry_ \- was laughing a little bit at how incredibly pitiful Magnus looked, standing outside the ship covered in mud and looking utterly defeated. Somebody eventually went to get Merle, who also took a minute to laugh at Magnus before casting Create Food and Water, and conjuring up 30 gallons of water and a giant platter of sandwiches, which everyone ate while they watched Cap’nport hose Magnus down to get as much mud off as possible before finally letting him on the ship. 

The mud stank, so by extension, Magnus stank, and Lup and Taako make a big show of holding their noses and retching melodramatically while Magnus flipped them off and headed for the ship’s shower. Lucretia asked him if he was okay, very sincerely, which he appreciated, and she asked him to tell her what he saw after he cleaned up and rested.

Now, trapped in the shower where he’s probably going to die, he feels a little bad that he won’t be able to fill Lucretia in, but he’s sure someone else will venture out at some point in the next year. Magnus isn’t sure how long he’s been in the shower- maybe 15 minutes, maybe an hour, who knows! Time passes so slowly when you accidentally manage to wedge yourself in the tiny shower of a spaceship, a shower that was undoubtedly meant for reasonably-sized people and elves and dwarves and gnomes and not a huge human man who is, for all intents and purposes, a fucking tank. He’d just turned to grab the soap to scrub his legs again because he can still smell that marshy smell and he’d turned just the wrong way and then he couldn’t move. And he couldn’t reach the soap. Magnus is a lot of things, but super flexible is not one of them. So he tried everything he could- shrugging his shoulders, wiggling, straining- until he was just tired and maybe more stuck than before. But after some amount of time passes, someone knocks on the bathroom cubicle door and says, “You alive in there?”

It’s Lup, because of course it’s Lup, the gods have clearly abandoned Magnus and wouldn’t have sent, like, Lucretia or Barry or someone a little nicer to check on him. But he’s desperate at this point, and any plans he had to just die with dignity in this tiny shower go out the window and he says, “I’m stuck in the shower.”

Magnus says it at a normal volume, and there’s no way Lup didn’t hear him with those fucking elf ears of hers, but she says, “Come again?” after a beat, and Magnus can just hear the glee in her voice.

“Lup, I’m fucking stuck in the shower and if you don’t help me or get Barry or Merle or somebody I swear to whatever gods still give a shit about me I’ll die in here out of spite and haunt you all year.”

He hears her straight-up laugh, and then she says, “Hold on, dude, I’ll be back.”

She does come back, and she does bring Barry, who gingerly slides open the door and sees Magnus, fully nude and wedged into the shower, and has to slide the door closed again to laugh. Magnus drops a few choice curse words at him and his future children and grandchildren, and after a few minutes Barry opens the door again. 

“I’m not looking at your dick, I swear,” is the first thing Barry says, and from out in the hall Lup says something like _the hell you're not._ Barry looks at Magnus, looks at the shower, and says, “Have you tried shrugging your shoulders?”

Magnus tells Barry everything he’s tried, and Barry tells him to hold on, and walks out. He leaves the door open, and is gone for just long enough that Taako walks by and sees Magnus stuck in the shower. He laughs so hard he can’t breathe, and Magnus feels like he should’ve just said nothing and died in the shower like a reasonable person.

Barry comes back with Cap’nport and Lucretia, who takes one look at Magnus and blushes bright red and covers her eyes with one hand. 

It takes every member of the team to get him out, and so much soap. They squeeze as much liquid soap as possible between Magnus’s body and the walls of the shower and then pull as hard as they can. It looks like something out of a comedy sketch, Barry holding Magnus’ arm, Taako holding Barry’s waist, Lup holding Barry’s waist, Merle holding Lup’s hips because he can’t reach her waist, Cap’nport holding Merle’s waist, and Lucretia furiously writing everything down as Magnus begs her not to. They all pull and pull in the universe’s weirdest game of tug-of-war and finally, blessedly, Magnus slides free and everyone falls backward and onto each other. If they had been playing some kind of game, they would have gotten _so many_ Bond points. Unfortunately, it’s not a game so everyone just gets a few bruises from the fall and a story that gets told every few weeks of how Magnus got stuck in the fucking shower.

Magnus is pretty sure he’ll just have a visible, tangible layer of soap on him for the rest of his life. Especially since he’s not sure how he’ll wash it off without getting stuck again. Merle is generous enough to cast Create Food and Water again, and Magnus has to do his best to scrub off all the soap with a washcloth and the barrel of water from Merle. 

The rest of the team has to draw straws on who’s going to clean the rest of the soap off the shower walls, because if Magnus does it he might get stuck again. Barry draws the short straw, literally, and dutifully cleans the shower. 

The whole ordeal is the worst day of Magnus’ life.

\---------------------------------------------------

It’s a few cycles later- or maybe more than a few- when Cap’nport calls a team meeting. Everyone is sitting in the main cabin of the Starblaster, waiting to see what they’re being called for. Cap’nport stands up, clears his throat, and looks at the members of his crew.

“I’ve called you all here today to talk about bathroom etiquette. Please understand that this is not a conversation I ever thought I’d be having with you, a group of literal adults, and I hate this as much as you do.”

“If this is about me not putting the seat down sometimes, I already got yelled at for it. I’m trying, folks, so get off my ass.” Merle says, indignant. 

“Not quite. This is about more… personal matters.”

“Is it about pubes?” Lup asks. “Because that’s like, 90% Barry. Dude’s _way_ too into manscaping.” Taako looks like he can’t decide whether to be grossed out, or to high-five her. Barry looks like he wants to die.

“Actually, I’m glad you brought up Barry. Barry and Lup, we’re all aware of your… situation.”

“Huh?” says Merle, clearly not aware of any situation at all.

Cap’nport ignores him, and continues, “We’re here today because you two really… how do I put this professionally? You-“

“Gotta stop making out in the bathroom.” Taako says. “Seriously. People have to piss. Go do it in your rooms or on the deck or like, anywhere else where we don’t have to see you being nasty.”

Now Barry looks like he really wants to die, and Lup is looking nowhere near as abashed as she should. 

“Pretty much,” Cap’nport says. “We’re a team and we’re all pretty close, but please. I’m begging you both. Stop making out in the ship bathroom. Please.”

Lup shrugs. “Can’t promise anything, Cap. Sometimes a girl’s just gotta get her smooch on. Isn’t that right, Barold?” 

Barold doesn’t respond, and Taako looks decidedly disgusted. Lucretia is writing, presumably about the bathroom makeout saga, and Magnus looks like he’d rather be anywhere else.

“Wait, wait, whoa, hold up!” Merle says. “You mean Lup and Barry are a thing?”

“We call it Blupjeans,” Lucretia says without looking up from her journal.

**Author's Note:**

> Magnus getting stabbed by plants and stuck in a marsh is 100% based on personal experience. Black needlerush is real and it's out there, and sinking knee-deep in mud is a real son of a bitch, especially when you have to get hosed down out back of a hotel. My only saving grace I didn't get stuck in the shower afterwards.
> 
> If you've ever smelled pluff mud, that's The Smell.


End file.
